Advancing Excellence in America's Nursing Homes
The three-year-old Advancing Excellence in America’s Nursing Homes Campaign is moving to a new phase with the launching of a new and revised goals and an improved website www.nhqualitycampaign.org 
to provide nursing home leaders like you with new resources and other materials to help advance your quality improvement activities. Due to the launching of a new phase, nursing homes that have been with the Campaign since the beginning will need to re-enroll by updating your facility profile, deciding if you want to choose new goals or stay with those you currently have and set targets. Nursing homes that re-enroll by January 31, 2010 will receive a special recognition and designation as an Advancing Excellence Charter Member, a badge of honor to show that you’ve been with the Campaign since the beginning and are continuing your commitment to quality improvement. Experience has shown the value of the campaign to providers. The hope is other nursing homes will join now and become part of a growing movement to identify and work on quality goals to keep your residents healthier and more satisfied.
Why join? Nearly half of the nation’s nursing homes joined the Campaign during its first phase and the results have been very promising. Campaign participants that chose to focus on reducing use of physical restraints, reducing the prevalence of pressure ulcers, and controlling symptoms of pain, improved at a significantly faster rate than other nursing homes. There are tangible benefits for homes as well: improving staff retention and maintaining staff stability saves money, improves efficiency as well as outcomes and contributes to better relationships between residents and their caregivers.
On January 1, 2010, we start a new phase of the Campaign. Two new goals have been added for you to select, Advance Care Planning and Measuring Staff Satisfaction, and have revised several of the existing goals, to make it easier for you to measure and track your progress. The website’s many resources, including a new best practice - CNA Fact Sheets - to help nursing homes more effectively engage certified nursing assistants in quality improvement activities has also been updated. More hands-on tools will shortly be added.
Both new and existing participants will benefit from being part of the “new” Advancing Excellence Campaign, which neither duplicates nor conflicts with existing QI requirements or other QI initiatives. Please go to www.nhqualitycampaign.org and explore what the Campaign has to offer. We hope you decide to join the Advancing Excellence Campaign.
Webinar Presentations
- May 12, 2009 – Training Staff for Greater Impact: From Ho Hum to Dynamic webinar
- March 31, 2009 – Reducing Restraints Safely webinar
- February 26, 2009 – Part 2 of the Resident Satisfaction webinar
- September 25, 2008 – Staff Stability: Learn to Manage your Resources and Improve Staff Retention
- June 3, 2008 – Consistent Assignment – The Practice and the Experience
- February 21, 2008 – Reducing Pressure Ulcers in Nursing Homes: An Interdisciplinary Process Framework
- January 8, 2008 – Improving Pain Management by Using the Advancing Excellence Campaign Frameworks
Phase II
Some important things to know:
- If you already participate in the Campaign, you will need to update your profile and set targets for this new phase . Because we have new goals, you will also need to take a look at the goals and decide if you want to keep your existing goals or choose others.
- To participate, you must identify a minimum of three goals: one clinical goal, one organizational goal, and one other goal in either category. You have until January 31, 2010, to change your goals.
- The Campaign has reordered the eight goals to better accommodate your needs. For example, we have put Staff Retention as the first goal because having a stable workforce is so critical to quality improvement.
- Managing pain is now one goal. We have combined managing pain for long-stay residents and short-stay residents into one goal.
- We have added two new goals: Staff Satisfaction and Advance Care Planning.
- We are including target setting for all of the clinical goals because we know that a nursing home selecting a goal and setting a target improves faster than its peers.
- If you are a new participant, click Join Now and follow the directions. To join the Campaign, you need your provider number.
- If you have questions, contact a member of the KFMC Project Team.
